


The Skeletons in the Basement

by Motown_Murphy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Halloween, UNIT, UNIT era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 06:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21070574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Motown_Murphy/pseuds/Motown_Murphy
Summary: The Doctor, the Brigadier, and Sarah Jane are sent out on Halloween by UNIT to investigate strange appearances of legendary creatures in the suburbs of London, but they aren't prepared for what they find.





	The Skeletons in the Basement

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! This is my first fanfic since 2007 and honestly I'm a bit nervous. But it passed the litmus test when I sent it to my best classic Who buddy, so I suppose it's good enough for you all. Cheers!

“How do I look, my dear Sarah Jane?”

The Doctor smoothly exited his ride of choice, Bessie, and struck a dramatic pose, bearing his vampire fangs quite clearly. Sarah simply threw back her head and guffawed at the ludicrous sight, while the Brigadier inhaled deeply, quite ready to protest the entire goddamned thing. Why, he had never seen anything so undignified since Jo Grant had organised a UNIT Halloween party a year prior! It was such a preposterous sight, remembered the Brigadier, with soldiers galavanting about in all sorts of costumes. Jo had attempted, to no avail, to get the Brigadier to wear “at least” a ghastly-looking werewolf mask. And considering why he, the Doctor and Sarah Jane were forced to attend this party, the Brigadier had to scoff at the irony. Perhaps, he thought, I would have fit in better at this party if I’d have worn a werewolf mask, after all.

“Doctor, you look even more absurd than usual, and that must be quite difficult for you to do, all things considered.” lamented the Brigadier. “Must you wear such loud clothing?” he asked a bit more quietly than he had previously spoken, so that only he and the Doctor could hear. But the Doctor’s pumpkin-coloured smoking jacket and purple top hat were so loud, that if they could have, they would have muted the Brigadier’s words.

“My dear Brigadier, we must dress the part if we wish to fit in here! Have some inconspicuousness, would you? There’s a good chap.” He patted the Brigadier on his shoulder patronisingly.

The Brigadier, just barely audibly, muttered “Of course, of all people, you would be the one to know the most about inconspicuousness.” Either the Doctor chose to ignore this sarcastic insult, or the cool autumn breeze had carried the words away.

The Doctor looked to the seemingly average terraced home that lie before him. No decorations were affixed to the front, but the lights of 5 Park Street were on, and a joyful clamour emanating from the dwelling filled the crisp air. “Well, shall we?” the Doctor finally prompted. His friends solemnly nodded, and did a death march to the open door. The rumours they had heard about this home hadn’t exactly been welcoming, to say the least.

Sarah hasn’t said one odd word since we’ve arrived, as though she’s stiff with fear, thought the Brigadier, and he once again complained to himself that perhaps women just weren’t cut out for this line of work. Of course, he wasn’t about to hold that against her. “Everything alright, Miss Smith?” he inquired.

Sarah, not having expected anyone to speak, was visibly spooked, and jumped. “Oh, yes,” she replied, trying to play it off. “Just a bit chilly, I suppose.” She cursed to herself, knowing she hadn’t averted the Brigadier’s suspicions.

“I can assure you, Miss Smith, that this is simply a welfare check on behalf of UNIT. When we hear rumours such as werewolves and headless horsemen appearing, we are obligated to investigate, for the safety of this planet. God knows we’ve seen some peculiar sights in our time, so we cannot discount even a single rumour, no matter how incredulous. If you’d like to go home-“

“No, no, I think I’ll be quite fine, thank you.” said Sarah, somewhat superciliously. “I’m sure there’s nothing there at all, just as you said. Just a ploy to get more guests at their Halloween party.” She was lying thru her teeth now, and she knew it. Jeremy, her friend and coworker, _ was _ easily spooked, she reflected, but no so easily enough to have thought he saw the Black Shuck, not in this locale. And besides, she thought, Jeremy had the claw marks on his arm to prove the encounter really did happen. She shuddered as the gruesome mental image came back to her; blood running down Jeremy’s right arm, his eyes full of tears, his mouth full of spit, heart visibly throbbing. Clorinda, her boss, had suggested it had been a rabies-infected black labrador, but Jeremy had been acting as normal as was possible for him, all things considered, a week after the attack. And there was no way that a normal black lab could have done such a number on somebody, Sarah thought. If there was a Black Shuck, it was here at 5 Park Street. She was visibly shaking as they entered the house.

The Doctor was the one to make her jump this time. “I’d like to introduce you to my associates, Sarah Jane Smith, and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.”

A man dressed in a tacky ninja costume, complete with plastic nunchucks, extended his hand to Sarah. “How do you do, Miss Smith?” Her head began to ache slightly as their hands touched.

“Fine,” she muttered, faking a half-smile. The man, whose name she had missed while deep in her anxieties, was now shaking hands with the Brigadier, who seemed, to her, unaffected.

“Please, join in the festivities!” said the man. “There’s refreshments in the den to the left, if you’d like. If you’ll excuse me...”

“Of course!” said the Doctor cheerily.

“A refreshment sounds delightful, doesn’t it, Doctor?” said Sarah, tugging at the arm of his gaudy orange smoking jacket.

She pulled the Doctor out of the hall and towards the den as the man walked away, breathing the words “Come on!”

“Spooked already?” asked the Doctor coquettishly, smiling coyly.

Sarah hadn’t told the Doctor about Jeremy; after their latest falling out, she knew he would make some horrendous remark about how Jeremy had “deserved it.” He had inadvertently broken the food machine in the TARDIS whilst trying to make himself an ungodly amount of Welsh rarebit; and of course, the Doctor was absolutely irate. He shouted about how he had only recently received the TARDIS back, and to have part of it broken had sent him off the deep end. The Doctor was so harsh on him, that Sarah was afraid there might even be a physical altercation. There was no way she was bringing the name “Jeremy” into this conversation.

“No, Doctor, I’m not spooked,” lied Sarah, still holding her left temple. “Something’s wrong.”

The Doctor poured himself and Sarah some punch, which she distrustfully began to nurse. The two took seats on a beaten-up sofa with a terrible floral pattern that reminded Sarah of a horrible old chair her Aunt Lavinia had once owned.

“What was that book you lent me this summer?” inquired Sarah. “The one with all the wizards at that British boarding school?”

“Harry Potter?” the Doctor asked in disbelief. Something was wrong, indeed; because the Doctor realised that Sarah had been talking to him nonstop about the Philosopher’s Stone ever since she had read it. She had even tried to get the Brigadier to give it a go! But now, she couldn’t even recall the title of the series.

“Yes, that’s the one...” she said, her headache fading slightly. “Didn’t Harry Potter feel pain when he was near Voldemort?”

“If you’re thinking you’ve a headache because something evil is afoot, let me remind you, Sarah, that you haven’t even one scar on your forehead from an evil wizard.”

The Doctor smiled worriedly. Something was obviously wrong, but he was almost convinced it was Sarah having some sort of anxiety attack.

“It doesn’t take a scar from an evil wizard to get a headache around evil, Doctor; I’ve travelled with you long enough and crossed paths with enough evil beings to know.” Sarah retorted.

“Hm, yes, you make a fair point.” the Doctor conceded. “But I haven’t felt anything myself, and I dare say I am the more sensitive of us two, being that I am a Time Lord.” Sarah rolled her eyes.

“Let’s get back to the party, shall we?” the Doctor suggested kindly. He extended his arm towards Sarah, and gently prodded at her. “Come on,” he whispered. Sarah felt momentarily comforted, and joined him in the living room.

A woman dressed as a scarecrow was sitting on a leather couch, multiple odd beings surrounding her in an attempt to comfort her. The Brigadier, dressed as a milkman, was interrogating her gently, sitting beside her. The woman’s face was completely pale, as if she had seen a ghost.

“I swear to you, I didn’t just _ see _ a demon, there _ was _ a demon!” cried the woman in exasperation.

The Brigadier looked up to see the Doctor and Sarah Jane in the doorway, his eyes pleading for help. “Perfect time to arrive, you lot, I was just coming to get you.”

The Doctor sat down on the other side of the woman, and looked into her eyes, which were darting to and fro. “What seems to be the matter, ma’am?”

“You heard me, everybody heard me! I saw a demon! By the cellar!” she yelled, obviously inconsolable. Her icy blue eyes pierced the Doctor’s gaze.

“May I ask were you doing when you saw this demon?” asked the Doctor.

“I was in the kitchen getting more snacks! My husband and I own this house, you see. We’re the ones throwing the party.” she explained, twirling her curly red hair nervously.

“And you saw a demon in the kitchen?” inquired the Doctor incredulously.

“No, not in the kitchen!” she huffed, “In the cellar! The door was open, I haven’t a clue who done it, and there was a demon on the stairs! Red skin, pitchfork, the whole nine yards!”

“I haven’t seen any costumes like that all night,” mused a man dressed in a poncho and sombrero. “And I was the first person to get here...”

“Mrs. Mexter, is it? May my friends and I go into your cellar?” the Doctor finally asked.

“Yes, of course! And tell everyone when you see that demon! Think I’m stark raving mad, they do...” she muttered.

The Doctor and his friends made their second silent death march of the night towards the cellar. Sarah silently slipped her hand into the Doctor’s, and he squeezed her hand reassuringly.

At the foot of the stairs, Sarah stopped. She realised her friends’ lives may be in danger, and she didn’t care what the Doctor had to say about Jeremy at this point. “Doctor, I need to tell you something.”

“What’s that?” he asked, in a surprisingly sweet tone.

“Last week…” Sarah began her story, voice quivering, “I know you’re angry at him right now, but please, just listen... Jeremy came into work completely torn to shreds.” She was holding back tears now. “He had these horrendous scratch marks down his right arm, and they were deep enough to be bleeding. Clorinda and I sat him down and tried to make sense of his blubbering, but he was crying so hard. All he managed to say was that a large black dog had attacked him that morning on his way to work. Something he said the kids in his hometown called the ‘Black Shuck.’”

The Doctor scratched his chin pensively. Sarah awaited the impact of an abrasive response, but was shocked to find nothing happened. “You’re saying Jeremy had a sighting, just like the other people in this area?”

“Not just a sighting... He was in such bad shape, Doctor...” Sarah hugged herself and rubbed her forearms nervously. The Doctor placed a comforting hand on her back, and she swallowed her body’s attempt to cry.

“Whatever is down there, if it’s the thing that got Jeremy,” Sarah started, voice wavering, “we must be careful. I’ve seen what those monsters can do, and I don’t want to see it again.”

“We’ll do our absolute best to be cautious, my dear Sarah Jane,” the Doctor reassured her, “won’t we, Brigadier?”

“Hm? Oh, yes, we’ll do our very best, Miss Smith.” said a distracted Brigadier.

“Something bothering you, Brigadier?” asked the Doctor.

“Just a bit of a headache, sure it’ll clear up soon.” he admitted nonchalantly, but with a hint of defeat. He never did like to be seen as vulnerable.

“Well, shall we proceed?” asked the Doctor, stepping towards the frighteningly steep stairs. The cellar below was pitch black and unwelcoming.

Sarah and the Brigadier consented audibly, so the Doctor started to walk down first, his two friends following behind him cautiously.

The Doctor felt the walls, and tried to illuminate the darkness with his Sonic Screwdriver, although it had little effect. He turned to the group dramatically. “These walls are ancient,” he gaped, “from the Early Middle Ages at most. How is this in the cellar of a house in London?”

“Should we keep walking?” Sarah piped up quietly after a moment.

“Yes, yes, I suppose we had better...” grumbled the Doctor. He scratched his head, perplexed.

The hall seemed to stretch on for a couple of minutes, until a room with a mirror in the middle and a raging fire like a moat around its walls gradually began to appear in the distance.

The Doctor was deathly afraid of the fire. Sarah and the Brigadier’s headaches got worse.

“I swear I recognise that mirror, Doctor!” gawked Sarah, stepping towards it cumbersomely, one hand plastered across her forehead.

“Sarah, be careful!” shouted the Doctor, more concerned for Sarah’s safety than about his fear of fire. He bolted after her.

As Sarah approached the mirror, she wanted to cry. It was showing her parents, standing beside her, arms around her. She had only ever seen them in photos, but there was no mistaking who they were. She wanted to step inside the mirror and fall into their arms, become a child again.

Her head began to hurt all the more, and she heard a familiar voice; the man who had met her at the door. “A twenty three year old woman, yearning for parents she’s never met? How pathetic.” it hissed.

“Who are you?” Sarah yelled, her voice strained from the pain of the searing headache. “How are you in my mind?”

It was as if the man had pulled a veil off of his being, and Sarah suddenly recognised him clearly. Voldemort.

The man, Mr. Mexter, took off the ninja mask he had worn earlier in the evening, to reveal himself as a blue, bald, noseless man. He strode towards Sarah as if he could walk on air. The Brigadier spat in pain, a noise neither the Doctor nor Sarah had ever heard from him. In that moment, he thought that perhaps women _ were _ cut out for this line of work after all, considering that Sarah was faring far better than he was. He wished he would live to find out if his change of philosophy was true.

“Stay back!” yelled the Doctor, as Voldemort stood exceedingly close to Sarah and the mirror. “You’re only a figment! I have the power to defeat you!”

“Oh, but what a figment I am,” touted Voldemort. “I’m the demon who scared Mrs. Mexter. I’ve been pretending to be her husband for months now. I was the Black Shuck that attacked this vulnerable young lady’s friend. And what a tasty snack he was...”

“STOP!” screamed Sarah, “I can’t bear it!”

“And I could attack her now. And everyone in this room! All I have to say is two little words; avada-“

“SPOILERS!” the Doctor bellowed. “She hasn’t even read the second book yet!”

The Doctor approached Voldemort, holding his Sonic Screwdriver like a wand. “All I have to say is one word. Riddikulus!”

Voldemort suddenly looked down to find himself wearing a bright yellow mac and wellies. His eyes widened in disbelief. The Doctor was on the floor, contorted in a fit of laughter; but in the moment, he managed to press a button on his Sonic, which began to consume the very embarrassed Voldemort, the room, and the entire basement into the screwdriver. Standing up from their newfound headache relief, Sarah and the Brigadier examined the cellar to find it contained a washing machine and dryer, unfinished walls, and an extremely ugly linoleum floor. Everything was back to normal.

“Doctor,” breathed Sarah, “what was that?”

“Something you’ll find out about in book three, I’m afraid...” he said with a weak smile, scratching his hair apprehensively. “Look, I’ve got to go upstairs and tell Mrs. Mexter about her husband, the poor woman...” And with that, he was off.

Sarah and the Brigadier stood near the kitchen in silence, or perhaps disbelief. They were exhausted, and were barely able to stand.

“Brigadier, would you kindly tell me something?” Sarah asked. “Whatever was down there, was showing up as people’s worst fears. Werewolves, the Headless Horseman... Jeremy told me he’d been afraid of the Black Shuck since he was a little tot. And the Doctor told me how he nearly died in a fire not so long ago. I was afraid of the antagonist from a book I read, and I was down on the floor suffering from the headaches he caused the protagonist. But so were you, and the Doctor wasn’t...” There was silence. “Did you actually read the Philosopher’s Stone when I lent it to you?’

There was a sly smile on Sarah Jane’s face. The Brigadier’s visage had turned as red as a tomato.

“Perhaps, Miss Smith, some things are best left unsaid.”

“You don’t need to say anything!” she laughed. “If you felt the pain in your forehead, you were just as afraid of Voldemort as I was! You obviously read the book!” Sarah tilted her head back and laughed. “So, what house are you in?”

The Brigadier sighed out of his nostrils, and looked Sarah straight in the eyes. Seeing her eagerness and joy, he finally choked out the word “Gryffindor.”

“What a coincidence!” shrieked Sarah gleefully. “I’m in Gryffindor too!”

“Miss Smith,” said the Brigadier lowly, “I mean this in total confidence. Could you please get me a copy of the second book out of the Doctor’s library? He’d never let me hear the end of it if he knew I enjoyed these books.”

Sarah smiled sweetly. “Consider it done.”


End file.
